Cellular and wireless communication devices have seen explosive growth over the past several years. This growth has been fueled by better communications hardware, larger networks, and more reliable protocols. Today's smartphones may include cameras, GPS receivers, Bluetooth® transceivers, and of course the cellular communication capabilities (e.g., LTE, 3G and/or 4G network access) to enable the devices to establish data communication links with the Internet. The various components and capabilities in smartphones are now very affordable, and thus smartphones and other similar mobile devices (e.g., tablets, laptops, etc.) are now very widely deployed in society.
However, the complexity of modern mobile devices may make it difficult for users to install and configure applications and peripheral devices. In particular, setting up a smartphone to interact with sensors or peripheral devices may require numerous operations for downloading applications, authenticating users, requesting authorizations, and entering credentials in order to access related functionalities. For example, in order to permit a friend's tablet mobile device to access a home WiFi router, a homeowner may need to provide the friend a password, as well as set up other access conditions for the friend's tablet (e.g., set individual permissions for accessing devices on a LAN, adjust media access control (MAC) address filtering settings on the router, etc.). As another example, a guest of a house may need to search in an online app store to find the appropriate application (or app) for controlling a nearby thermostat and then may also need to ask the owner of the house for the password to access the thermostat.